BOSTON (WHDH) - As the coronavirus pandemic continues to pose a serious threat to public health and safety, a growing number of companies in Boston are reportedly telling their employees to keep working from home until January, at the earliest.
MassMutual, Tufts Health Plan, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Wayfair, among many others, have pushed back their return dates in recent days, according to The Boston Globe.
Those four major companies are said to represent 15,000 Bay State workers.
An uptick in new positive coronavirus test rates and people being hesitant to ride public transportation are just a few factors for delaying the return to officers, JD Chesloff, head of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, told the newspaper.
Many companies have also been “surprised” by how effective the work-from-home experiment has gone since workers abandoned their officers in March, the report said.
Tom Croswell, CEO of Tufts Health Plan, told the Globe that the decision to push the return date back to January was in part due to back-to-school plans still being “very much in flux.”
Friday marks the deadline for Massachusetts public school districts to submit three reopening plans.
The state wants schools to submit plans for in-person learning with new safety requirements, a hybrid of in-person and remote learning, and remote learning.
School leaders will have a few weeks to decide on the best model to use.
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